


home is here, home is you

by ahermioneh



Series: Nursey Week 2021 [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Character Study, Found Family, Gen, Home, Nursey Week 2021, Nursey Week: Day 1 - Family and Home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:16:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29334399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahermioneh/pseuds/ahermioneh
Summary: Derek’s never truly settled anywhere.
Series: Nursey Week 2021 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2154669
Kudos: 12





	home is here, home is you

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for [Nursey Week 2021](https://nurseyweek2021.tumblr.com/): Day 1 - Family and Home.

Derek’s never truly settled anywhere. 

Yeah, he’ll slip into the perfectly rehearsed New Yorker role when people ask; it’s way easier than explaining the jumble of places that he fleetingly called home before they finally moved to The City when he was ten. Yeah, he loves New York and the eternal flow of new people, being able to just sit back and watch the world go by, speculating about each individual’s life and what makes the city tick. Yeah, he loves experiencing the culture and the food and the sounds and the entire atmosphere of a place where everyone is constantly just living.

But it’s not home. 

New York doesn’t envelop him like a warm hug that he can relax into at a moment’s notice. It isn’t truly a place where he can just stew in his own thoughts, quietly keeping himself company until he’s finished his book, his poem, his newest daydream. He’s constantly yearning for that feeling of home for so long, constantly seeking a seemingly unattainable warmth where he can just be himself. The person he is in New York is always a charade; he puts this city boy veneer on to be ostentatious and front as someone he just isn’t, embracing the pretentious hipster role before anyone can see through his carefully constructed facade. 

The closest he’s come to home before now is the tiny town just outside of Paris when he was eight. He still remembers walking with Mama to the bakery every morning, breathing in the smell of freshly baked bread, watching the cows and horses in the patchwork of fields that surrounded their village, and simply watching the world go slowly by, as if it was waiting for him to finish recording every detail of those small moments and etch them permanently into his mind. He misses that simplicity. He misses feeling the seconds trickle by as he watched the world in endless wonder before time would readjust to its usual flow, giving him a gentle nudge to keep going about his day. That sensation of getting lost in his own surroundings is what Derek thinks of as home, but he hasn’t found it again for a long time. 

Not in Los Angeles.

Not in New York.

Definitely not at Andover.

However, as he walks into the Haus after class to the smell of Bitty baking pie, the sound of Ollie and Wicky arguing over the Xbox, the sight of Chowder beaming at him from his spot at the kitchen table and the feeling of Dex resolutely by his side, Derek’s starting to think that he might have rediscovered what home means to him.

**Author's Note:**

> Check out all the works for Nursey Week 2021 [here](https://nurseyweek2021.tumblr.com)


End file.
